Context of Practice : Practical Brief / Daido Moriyama

This is my image (below) in the style of contemporary photographer Daido Moriyama. The image was shot at night using a Canon G1X compact camera with built-in flash. This decision was informed by the following quote from the video entitled Daido Moriyama: In Pictures.

"I don't use a large camera, instead I always use a compact camera. I mainly photograph in the street and this doesn't make people feel uncomfortable. It's easy to shoot with."

The subject matter is partially derived from Moriyama's feelings that "the world is an erotic place" and "cities are enormous bodies of people's desires". However, Moriyama also states that he is "drawn to all sorts of things"therefore I didn't set out with the intention of photographing anything in particular.

The composition is a little too constructed in relation to Moriyama's work. That is my primary criticism.

An ISO of 400 was adequate enough to compensate for the absence of natural light. However I chose to shoot at an ISO of 800 in order to increase the appearance of noise. This lends itself to Moriyama's snapshot aesthetic.

With regards to post-production, the image was converted to black & white so as to be in keeping with the majority of Moriyama's work. His rationale for doing so is as follows:

" The reason why I think black and white photography is erotic is completely due to my body's instinctive response. Monochrome has stronger elements of abstraction or symbolism. There's an element of taking you to another place. Black and white has that physical effect on me, thats just the way I respond to things. Colour is something more vulgar, because colour is making the decisions, it feels vulgar. That seems to me to be the difference."

Additionally, the contrast within the image has been substantially increased. This decision was informed by the counterchange largely present in his work. This brings me to my secondary criticism, which is that there isn't quite enough counterchange in relation to Moriyama's work.